LETTER FROM DENVER.
MONDAY, _3d September._
MY DEAR ----,
Here we are, scalps and all.
On Tuesday last, at sundown, we left Fort Riley, and supped at Junction
City, the extreme point that “civilization” has reached upon the plains.
Civilization means whisky: post-offices don‘t count.
It was here that it first dawned upon us that we were being charged 500
dollars to guard the United States Californian mail, with the
compensation of the chance of being ourselves able to rob it with
impunity. It is at all events the case that we, well armed as the mail
officers at Leavenworth insisted on our being, sat inside with forty-two
cwt. of mail, in open bags, and over a great portion of the route had
only the driver with us, without whose knowledge we could have read all
and stolen most of the letters, and with whose knowledge, but against
whose will, we could have carried off the whole, leaving him gagged,
bound, and at the mercy of the Indians. As it was, a mail-bag fell out
one day, without the knowledge of either Dixon or the driver, who were
outside, and I had to shout pretty freely before they would pull up.
On Wednesday we had our last “squar’ meal” in the shape of a breakfast,
at Fort Ellsworth, and soon were out upon the almost unknown plains. In
the morning we caught up and passed long wagon trains, each wagon drawn
by eight oxen, and guarded by two drivers and one horseman, all armed
with breech-loading rifles and revolvers, or with the new “repeaters,”
before which breech-loaders and revolvers must alike go down. All day we
kept a sharp look-out for a party of seven American officers, who, in
defiance of the scout‘s advice, had gone out from the fort to hunt
buffalo upon the track. About sundown we came into the little station of
Lost Creek. The ranchmen told us that they had, during the day, been
driven in from their work by a party of Cheyennes, and that they had
some doubts as to the wisdom of the officers in going out to hunt.
Just as we were leaving the station, one of the officers’ horses dashed
in riderless, and was caught; and about two miles from the station we
passed another on its back, ripped up either by a knife or buffalo horn.
The saddle was gone, but there were no other marks of a fight. We
believe that these officers were routed by buffalo, not Cheyennes, but
still we should be glad to hear of them.
The track is marked in many parts of the plains by stakes, such as those
from which the Llano Estacado takes its name; but this evening we turned
off into devious lines by way of precaution against ambuscades, coming
round through the sandy beds of streams to the ranches for the change of
mules. The ranchmen were always ready for us; for, while we were still a
mile away, our driver would put his hand to his mouth, and give a “How!
how! how! how--w!” the Cheyenne warhoop.
[Illustration]
In the weird glare that follows sunset we came upon a pile of rocks,
admirably fitted for an ambush. As we neared them, the driver said:
“It‘s ’bout an even chance thet we‘s sculp ther’!” We could not avoid
them, as there was a gully that could only be crossed at this one
point. We dashed down into the “creek” and up again, past the rocks:
there were no Indians, but the driver was most uneasy till we reached
Big Creek.
Here they could give us nothing whatever to eat, the Indians having, on
Tuesday, robbed them of everything they had, and ordered them to leave
within fifteen days on pain of death.
For 250 miles westward from Big Creek we found that every station had
been warned (and most plundered) by bands of Cheyennes, on behalf of the
forces of the confederation encamped near the creek itself. The warning
was in all cases that of fire and death at the end of fifteen days, of
which nine days have expired. We found the horse-keepers of the company
everywhere leaving their stations, and were, in consequence, very nearly
starved, having been unsuccessful in our shots from the “coach,” except,
indeed, at the snakes.
On Thursday we passed Big Timber, the only spot on the plains where
there are trees; and there the Indians had counted the trunks and
solemnly warned the men against cutting more: “Fifty-two tree. You no
cut more tree--no more cut. Grass! You cut grass; grass make big fire.
You good boy--you clear out. Fifteen day, we come: you no gone--ugh!”
The “ugh” accompanied by an expressive pantomime.
On Thursday evening we got a meal of buffalo and prairie dog, the former
too strong for my failing stomach, the latter wholesome nourishment, and
fit for kings--as like our rabbit in flavor as he is in shape. This was
at the horse-station of “The Monuments,” a natural temple of awesome
grandeur, rising from the plains like a giant Stonehenge.
On Friday we “breakfasted” at Pond Creek station, two miles from Fort
Wallis. Here the people had applied for a guard, and had been answered:
“Come into the fort; we can‘t spare a man.” So much for the value of the
present forts; and yet even these--Wallis and Ellsworth--are 200 miles
apart.
We were joined at breakfast by Bill Comstock, interpreter to the
fort,--a long-haired, wild-eyed half-breed,--who gave us, in an hour‘s
talk, the full history of the Indian politics that have led to the
present war.
The Indians, to the number of 20,000, have been in council with the
Washington Commissioners all this summer at Fort Laramie; and, after
being clothed, fed, and armed, lately concluded a treaty, allowing the
running on the mail-roads. They now assert that this treaty was intended
to apply to the Platte road (from Omaha and Atchison through Fort
Kearney), and to the Arkansas road, but not to the Smoky Hill road,
which lies between the others, and runs through the buffalo country; but
their real opposition is to the railroad. The Cheyennes (pronounced
Shíans) have got the Camanches, Appaches, and Arrapahoes from the south,
and the Sioux and Kiowas from the north, to join them in a
confederation, under the leadership of Spotted Dog, the chief of the
Little Dog section of the Cheyennes, and son of White Antelope,--killed
at Sand Creek battle by the Kansas and Colorado Volunteers,--who has
sworn to avenge his father.
Soon after leaving Pond Creek, we sighted at a distance three mounted
“braves,” leading some horses; and when we reached the next station, we
found that they had been there openly proclaiming that their mounts had
been stolen from a team.
All this day we sat with our revolvers laid upon the mail-bags in front
of us, and our driver also had his armory conspicuously displayed, while
we swept the plains with many an anxious glance. We were on lofty
rolling downs, and to the south the eye often ranged over much of the
130 miles which lay between us and Texas. To the north the view was more
bounded; still, our chief danger lay near the boulders, which here and
there covered the plains.
All Thursday and Friday we never lost sight of the buffalo, in herds of
about 300, and the “antelope”--the prong-horn, a kind of gazelle--in
flocks of six or seven. Prairie dogs were abundant, and wolves and
black-tail deer in view at every turn.
The most singular of all the sights of the plains is the constant
presence every few yards of the skeletons of buffalo and of horse, of
mule and of ox; the former left by the hunters, who take but the skin,
and the latter the losses of the mails and the wagon-trains through
sunstroke and thirst. We killed a horse on the second day of our
journey.
When we came upon oxen that had not long been dead, we found that the
intense dryness of the air had made mummies of them: there was no
stench, no putrefaction.
During the day I made some practice at antelope with the driver‘s
Ballard; but an antelope at 500 yards is not an easy target. The driver
shot repeatedly at buffalo at twenty yards, but this only to keep them
away from the horses; the revolver balls did not seem to go through
their hair and skin, as they merely shambled on in their usual happy
sort of way, after receiving a discharge or two.
The prairie dogs sat barking in thousands on the tops of their mounds,
but we were too grateful to them for their gayety to dream of
pistol-shots. They are no “dogs” at all, but rabbits that bark, with all
the coney‘s tricks and turns, and the same odd way of rubbing their
face with their paws while they con you from top to toe.
With wolves, buffalo, antelope, deer, skunks, dogs, plover, curlew,
dottrel, herons, vultures, ravens, snakes, and locusts, we never seemed
to be without a million companions in our loneliness.
From Cheyenne Wells, where we changed mules in the afternoon, we brought
on the ranchman‘s wife, painfully making room for her at our own
expense. Her husband had been warned by the Cheyennes that the place
would be destroyed: he meant to stay, but was in fear for her. The
Cheyennes had made her cook for them, and our supper had gone down
Cheyenne throats.
Soon after leaving the station, we encountered one of the great
“dirt-storms” of the plains. About 5 P.M. I saw a little white cloud
growing into a column, which in half an hour turned black as night, and
possessed itself of half the skies. We then saw what seemed to be a
waterspout; and, though no rain reached us, I think it was one. When the
storm burst on us we took it for rain, and halting, drew down our canvas
and held it against the hurricane. We soon found that our eyes and
mouths were full of dust; and when I put out my hand I felt that it was
dirt, not rain, that was falling. In a few minutes it was pitch dark,
and after the fall had continued for some time, there began a series of
flashes of blinding lightning, in the very center and midst of which we
seemed to be. Notwithstanding this, there was no sound of thunder. The
“norther” lasted some three or four hours, and when it ceased, it left
us total darkness, and a wind which froze our marrow as we again started
on our way. When Fremont explored this route, he reported that the high
ridge between the Platte and Arkansas was notorious among the Indians
for its tremendous dirt-storms. Sheet lightning without thunder
accompanies dust-storms in all great continents; it is as common in the
Punjab as in Australia, in South as in North America.
On Saturday morning, at Lake station, we got beyond the Indians, and
into a land of plenty, or at all events a land of something, for we got
milk from the station cow, and preserved fruits that had come round
through Denver from Ohio and Kentucky. Not even on Saturday, however,
could we get dinner, and as I missed the only antelope that came within
reach, our supper was not much heavier than our breakfast.
Rolling through the Arrapahoe country, where it is proposed to make a
reserve for the Cheyennes, at eight o‘clock on Saturday morning we
caught sight of the glittering snows of Pike‘s Peak, a hundred and fifty
miles away, and all the day we were galloping toward it, through a
country swarming with rattlesnakes and vultures. Late in the evening,
when we were drawing near to the first of the Coloradan farms, we came
on a white wolf unconcernedly taking his evening prowl about the
stock-yards. He sneaked along without taking any notice of us, and
continued his thief-like walk with a bravery that seemed only to show
that he had never seen man before; this might well be the case, if he
came from the south, near the upper forks of the Arkansas.
All this, and the frequency of buffalo, I was unprepared for. I imagined
that though the plains were uninhabited, the game had all been killed.
On the contrary, the “Smoky district” was never known so thronged with
buffalo as it is this year. The herds resort to it because there they
are close to the water of the Platte River, and yet out of the reach of
the traffic of the Platte road. The tracks they make in traveling to
and fro across the plains are visible for years after they have ceased
to use them. I have seen them as broad and as straight as the finest of
Roman roads.
On Sunday, at two in the morning, we dashed into Denver; and as we
reeled and staggered from our late prison, the ambulance, into the
“cockroach corral” which does duty for the bar-room of the “Planters’
House,” we managed to find strength and words to agree that we would fix
no time for meeting the next day. We expected to sleep for thirty hours;
as it was, we met at breakfast at seven A.M., less than five hours from
the time we parted. It is to-day that we feel exhausted; the
exhilaration of the mountain air, and the excitement of frequent visits,
carried us through yesterday. Dixon is suffering from strange blains and
boils, caused by the unwholesome food.
We have been called upon here by Governor Gilpin and Governor Cummings,
the opposition governors. The former is the elected governor of the
State of Colorado which is to be, and would have been but for the fact
that the President put his _big toe_ (Western for _veto_) upon the bill;
the latter, the Washington-sent governor of the Territory. Gilpin is a
typical pioneer man, and the descendant of a line of such. He comes of
one of the original Quaker stocks of Maryland, and he and his ancestors
have ever been engaged in founding States. He himself, after taking an
active share in the foundation of Kansas, commanded a regiment of
cavalry in the Mexican war. After this, he was at the head of the
pioneer army which explored the _parcs_ of the Cordilleras and the
Territory of Nevada. He it was who hit upon the glorious idea of placing
Colorado half upon each side of the Sierra Madre. There never, in the
history of the world, was a grander idea than this. Any ordinary
pioneer or politician would have given Colorado the “natural” frontier,
and have tried for the glory of the foundation of two States instead of
one. The consequence would have been, lasting disunion between the
Pacific and Atlantic States, and a possible future break-up of the
country. As it is, this commonwealth, little as it at present is, links
sea to sea, and Liverpool to Hong Kong.
The city swarms with Indians of the bands commanded by the chiefs Nevara
and Collorego. They are at war with the six confederate tribes, and with
the Pawnees--with all the plain Indians, in short. Now, as the Pawnees
are also at war with the six tribes, there is a pretty triangular fight.
They came in to buy arms, and fearful scoundrels they look. Short,
flat-nosed, long-haired, painted in red and blue, and dressed in a gaudy
costume, half Spanish, half Indian, which makes their filthiness appear
more filthy by contrast, and themselves carrying only their Ballard and
Smith-and-Wesson, but forcing the squaws to carry all their other goods,
and papooses in addition, they present a spectacle of unmixed ruffianism
which I never expect to see surpassed. Dixon and I, both of us, left
London with “Lo! the poor Indian,” in all his dignity and
hook-nosedness, elevated on a pedestal of nobility in our hearts. Our
views were shaken in the East, but nothing revolutionized them so
rapidly as our three days’ risk of scalping in the plains. John Howard
and Mrs. Beecher Stowe themselves would go in for the Western “disarm at
any price, and exterminate if necessary” policy if they lived long in
Denver. One of the braves of Nevara‘s command brought in the scalp of a
Cheyenne chief taken by him last month, and to-day it hangs outside the
door of a pawnbroker‘s shop, for sale, fingered by every passer-by.
Many of the band were engaged in putting on their paint, which was
bright vermilion, with a little indigo round the eye. This, with the
sort of pigtail which they wear, gives them the look of the gnomes in
the introduction to a London pantomime. One of them--Nevara himself, I
was told--wore a sombrero with three scarlet plumes, taken probably from
a Mexican, a crimson jacket, a dark-blue shawl, worn round the loins and
over the arm in Spanish dancer fashion, and embroidered moccasins. His
squaw was a vermilion-faced bundle of rags, not more than four feet
high, staggering under buffalo hides, bow and arrows, and papoose. They
move everywhere on horseback, and in the evening withdraw in military
order, with advance and rear guard, to a camp at some distance from the
town.
I inclose some prairie flowers, gathered in my walks round the city.
Their names are not suited to their beauty; the large white one is “the
morning blower,” the most lovely of all, save one, of the flowers of the
plains. It grows with many branches to a height of some eighteen inches,
and bears from thirty to fifty blooms. The blossoms are open up to a
little after sunrise, when they close, seldom to open even after sunset.
It is, therefore, peculiarly the early riser‘s flower; and if it be true
that Nature doesn‘t make things in vain, it follows that Nature intended
men--or, at all events, _some_ men--to get up early, which is a point
that I believe was doubtful hitherto.
For the one prairie flower which I think more beautiful than the blower
I cannot find a name. It rises to about six inches above ground, and
spreads in a circle of a foot across. Its leaf is thin and spare; its
flower-bloom a white cup, about two inches in diameter; and its buds
pink and pendulent.
All our garden annuals are to be found in masses acres in size upon the
plains. Penstemon, coreopsis, persecaria, yucca, dwarf sumach, marigold,
and sunflower, all are flowering here at once, till the country is
ablaze with gold and red. The coreopsis of our gardens they call the
“rosin-weed,” and say that it forms excellent food for sheep.
The view of the “Cordillera della Sierra Madre,” the Rocky Mountain main
chain, from the outskirts of Denver is sublime; that from the roof at
Milan does not approach it. Twelve miles from the city the mountains
rise abruptly from the plains. Piled range above range with step-like
regularity, they are topped by a long white line, sharply relieved
against the indigo of the sky. Two hundred and fifty miles of the mother
Sierra are in sight from our veranda; to the south, Pike‘s Peak and
Spanish Peak; Long‘s Peak to the north; Mount Lincoln towering above
all. The views are limited only by the curvature of the earth, such is
the marvelous purity of the Coloradan air, the effect at once of the
distance from the sea and of the bed of limestone which underlies the
plains.
The site of Denver is heaven-blessed in climate as well as loveliness.
The sky is brilliantly blue, and cloudless from dawn till noon. In the
mid-day heats, cloud-making in the Sierra begins, and by sunset the
snowy chain is multiplied a hundred times in curves of white and purple
cumuli, while thunder rolls heavily along the range. “This is a great
country, sir,” said a Coloradan to me to-day. “We make clouds for the
whole universe.” At dark there is dust or thunder-storm at the mountain
foot, and then the cold and brilliant night. Summer and winter it is the
same.